


A Kiss for an Embrace

by suchadearie



Series: Trading for Touch [5]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 12:00:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchadearie/pseuds/suchadearie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part V of the Trading for Touch series: Belle and cursed!Mr. Gold try to mend what is broken between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Kiss for an Embrace

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Whiteorangeflower](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whiteorangeflower/gifts).



He felt horrible for what he’d done to her. Even though it was just what she had done to him, too. But knowing this made it even worse, because he knew exactly how it felt to get so thoroughly shattered. He didn’t believe for one second that she would come back after that, not even after the kiss she pressed to his lips. He didn’t believe in her crazy jabbering about love either. Something was wrong with this girl, but his resolve to stay away from her, don’t let her near him ever again, crumbled with each day he didn’t see her. Something was off, wrong about her, and something felt so completely right about her, as if there was a promise of being whole in her arms, one that could only come true if he allowed himself to sink down to the bottom of this ice cold pond that her embrace was.

And it seemed as if he had held his breath and waited to reach the ground of this bottomless pond for forever when she, against all hope and fear, did come back. She entered his shop with a paper tray holding two cups of coffee-to-go, and she made it to the counter without looking at him, as if she needed all her concentration not to spill the coffee she was carrying. She didn’t look at him until after she placed the tray on his counter, in front of him, and gently nudged it towards him.

“What’s that?” he asked, and he didn’t even greet her.

“It’s coffee. And a peace offering.”

“How…touching.”

She cast down her eyes, and he could see a faint red glow on her cheekbones.

“Why did you even come back, Miss French?”

“Please, call me…Lily.” There was a short pause, as if she had to struggle to offer him her name, and he wondered why she did it at all.

“Well, then, what do you want in exchange for your coffee? I’m sure you got it at Granny’s, which makes it the most awful tasting coffee in town, and not a very enticing offering for a truce.”

“The coffee is on me. I’m here to buy another present.” She still stared down at the paper cups, and he found himself longing to see the blue of her eyes again.

“For that boyfriend of yours?” He hadn’t forgotten that, even though he had never seen her with someone. But then, he never saw her at all, so that didn’t mean anything.

She swallowed heavily before she answered, but her voice still sounded hoarse and broken. “Yes.”

“And what do you have in mind?” He wouldn’t be surprised if she picked another one of his personal items, like a magpie going after shiny things, and he wondered if this boyfriend of hers was nothing but a pretense to get her hands on his personal things. Now, she looked around, but it didn’t look as if she saw anything at all. Her eyes slid over the instruments and pictures lining his walls without taking them in, and he knew then that it was only a diversion to distract him from her true target. She thought to be really subtle, and yet was advertising her true intentions almost as clearly as if she was carrying around a neon sign pointing at them. He leant on the counter, propped up on his elbows, and his fingers steepled in front of him, catching the dim light coming through the front window in his cufflinks. And like that of a magpie, her eyes were drawn to them. He allowed himself a smirk. He was not about to give her anything of his again. He wasn’t going to give her the tiniest bit of power over him again, no matter how much he longed to feel complete, no matter how alluring the promise of her embrace was. If she wanted anything from him, she would have to beg for it. But even then, he wouldn’t expose himself to her ever again. Not only because she had humiliated him, but also because he had been cruel to her in return, and that was a side of him he didn’t like to look at.

Her breath came heavier, as if she had to take up all her courage to face him and reveal what she wanted. “I still like that pocket watch of yours very much”, she said, and he was at the same time relieved and disappointed that she had not fallen for his bait.

“And still, it’s not for sale.” He knew what would come next. She would offer him something in return, hoping to trade, and afterwards she would kiss him and try to bring him down again. He waited for her offer, waited for her to make a move so that he could turn her down, decline her. His insides clenched, trembled, and he gritted his teeth.

“Then it’s just the coffee.” She wrested one of the cups out of the tray and placed it in front of him, and took the other one to sip at it.

“No negotiating today, no attempt to trade?” He straightened, placing his palms on the counter. He felt the dampness of his skin on the glass, and it sent a shiver between his shoulder blades.

“Would I get anywhere with that?” she asked, tilting her head, and he had to keep himself from snorting.

“No.”

“Then no negotiating and no trading. Just sharing a coffee.”

For a moment he just looked at her, straight into her blue eyes, so open and yet so cautious. Then he took his coffee, only lukewarm by now, and took a sip, without letting her out of his eyes. “You’re tricky to figure out, you know that?” he asked after a while, when she just stood opposite him and sipped on her coffee.

“You thought I would fall for your cufflinks, huh?”

“And apparently I’m only to easy to figure out, when even a girl sees through me.” He was not sure how he should handle her bluntness, and it made him feel uneasy. She chuckled.

“Not really. You have to look very closely to see through Mr. Gold. To be fair, I had a little time to look.”

“What does that mean?”

She took another sip of coffee and nearly choked on it. When she started to cough, he reached for her paper cup and took it from her. He wasn’t so eager to have her spill her coffee on his polished floor boards. “It means nothing”, she rasped between coughs, and her face flushed with an ungainly shade of red. When she reached for her coffee again, he held it just out of her reach.

“Why did you come back?” he asked again, and the color drained from her face and left her pale and staring at him with eyes almost as huge as the moon.

“I wasn’t going to…but then something changed my mind.” It sounded as if she had learnt some script by heart, not like an honest answer at all.

“And what could that possibly have been? Some earth-shattering realization about the meaning of life?”

She deflated, as if she had held her breath and only now let it out. “Something like that, yeah.”

“I’m all ears, Miss French.”

“Lily”, she corrected him, automatically, but he ignored it. Her name still felt like a foreign object embedded in the flesh of his tongue, and it reminded him too much of the way she had picked him apart and dissected him, back in his house on his couch. When he didn’t answer, and didn’t give her back her coffee, she tilted her head and sighed. “I can only repeat how sorry I am. But I thought we’re even again. I hurt you, you hurt me, now let’s pick up the pieces.”

“Some things are impossible to repair, dear. Trust is a very fragile thing. It doesn’t come back easily, once it’s gone.”

“You never trusted me.”

“And you shouldn’t have trusted me.” His words drove her back, made her take a step backwards, and she lifted her hands as if she was searching for something to say, or as if she wanted to touch him and put him back together. He wondered why he felt always more broken and incomplete when she was around.

She didn’t touch him, not this time. Her hands fell back to her sides, and she made them into fists. “I’ll come back tomorrow. Perhaps you know what you want for your pocket watch by then.” She turned and left, and Gold stared after her and wondered if she would give up when he pushed her back with a little more force, a little more brutal…his stomach turned at this thought, and he almost retched. He had to close his eyes and inhale deeply to calm his roiling insides, and he realized that he wouldn’t push her away when she came back. She was dangerous, although he didn’t know exactly how, but no matter how afraid he was to let her close again…he also longed for her nearness. As terrifying as it was, he still felt the urge to bare his soul to her, so that, maybe, she could put it back together and fill up the missing pieces.

Again he felt like holding his breath, like slowly sinking down, until she came back the next day, and then the day after that, and the day after that. Each time, she brought him coffee, and asked him if he knew what he wanted in exchange for his pocket watch. Each time he turned her down, and each time, when she accepted his refusal, he felt a little safer. Until he realized, on the fourth day, that it was all nothing but a tactic, a strategy to lull his caution to sleep and make him susceptible.

“You’re trying to trick me again”, he said through clenched teeth, when the shock of his realization hit him like a battering ram, cold and merciless, right between his ribs.

“I’m not. Please, Mr. Gold, I just want to talk to you.” She sounded as if she was close to tears, exasperated, and he almost believed her. Until she placed her hand on his arm and pulled him with her into the back of his shop. She was tiny, and there was not a lot of physical strength in her touch, but still he was unable to shake her off. His mind went blank, and he wondered if he had not waited for this to happen again. Hoped for it. She pushed him down on that terrible cot and sat down at his side, one of her legs bent and tucked under her, and he only realized that he was shaking when she wrapped her arms around him and hummed nonsensical words into his hair. He noticed, out of a distance and somehow detached from his body, that he was shivering, that his hands were trembling in his lap, and he wondered what it was that was so terrifying. She patted his hair, soothed him with crooning sounds that vibrated over his skin, and her scent encompassed him, a fine trace of verbena and jasmine, engulfing him like a warm blanket. How was it possible to feel so safe and yet so split and apart at the same time, so far away and so there? Her warmth started to seep through him, soothing the tremors, and he felt himself relax.

“See, everything’s alright. That was just a little anxiety attack. It’s fine now.”

He closed his eyes and decided to let her hold him a little longer, to have her close for a while, before he would push her back again.

“I don’t even know what’s wrong”, he admitted after a while, and her sigh moved his hair and whispered over the skin of his neck.

“I know. It’s just a really messed up situation.” She held him a little longer, silently, before she asked: “Is it ok when I let go of you now? I think my leg fell asleep…”

He sat up straight instantly and watched her, feeling guilty. “I’m sorry.”

“No, that was my own fault. But maybe you could…massage it a little? It really hurts.” She leant back and stretched out the leg she had been sitting on, and tilted her head. He swallowed, feeling all too tight all of a sudden, and the prospect of touching her was at the same time frightening and enticing.

“I’m not sure if that’s a good idea”, he croaked, and she shrugged.

“Maybe not.” She started to massage her leg, leaning forward, and when her hair brushed over his arm, tickling him through his shirt, he realized that he was sitting too close. Her leg touched his, burning through the fabric of his pants, and his skin tingled, as if his leg, too, had fallen asleep. He shifted away from her and tried to ignore the hurt look in her eyes.

“I’m sorry”, he croaked again, and she tried to smile. But it was a pitiable imitation of a smile, and he couldn’t bear it. With a deep breath, he slid down from the cot to his knees, at her feet, and, after glancing up into her face to reassure himself, started to rub her calf and her ankle. She sucked in air and groaned, and he almost let go of her again, but she placed her hand on his shoulder and pressed him gently, telling him without words that it was ok.

“That’s better”, she said after a while, and he felt a blush on his cheekbones, warming his still too tight skin. He wanted to get back to his feet, somehow, grabbing the edge of the cot to support him, but she grabbed his shoulders again and held him down. Gold froze when she leant forward and pressed her lips to his forehead.

“Thank you”, she whispered, and then she kissed him, hesitantly, as if she was not sure if he would allow it. But when he didn’t draw back, she increased the pressure, and sighed against his skin, that grew even tighter with her breath on him. He opened his lips for a fraction, just enough to capture her bottom lip between his, and suck it a little in, just enough to feel the softness of her skin, just enough to feel her, for a moment. But when the tip of her tongue met his upper lip, licking fleetingly over his skin, he pulled away. She looked at him with big eyes, as if she waited for him to explode, and that look scared him almost as much as the kiss itself.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked, and again she smiled, and looked so sad that it twisted him upside down inside.

“Please, I just want to feel you.” She sounded hopeless, and he recognized the feeling. Their words might fail them, but their bodies knew what they needed. He reached for her face, framing it with his trembling hands, and kissed her again, a kiss that was more teeth and lip-bruising pressure than anything else, born in a hunger he didn’t understand. He longed to feel whole, longed for something that only her arms held, and he was almost rough when he pushed her down onto her back and heaved himself between her legs. But he was just as much pulled as he pushed, drawn down by her hands clawing into his flesh and her legs wrapped around his waist. His lips didn’t leave hers when she started to fumble with his clothes, and he started to shove and pull at hers. Their need left them no room for finesse, for gentleness or tender kisses, and she was just as rough with him as he was with her. He needed to reach that place inside her, needed to find the answer to his emptiness that she somehow held, and once their clothes were out of the way, she pulled him down on her and inside with a fierceness that bordered to despair. Each thrust was met with a breathless gasp from her lips, a mingling of breath and saliva, wet and warm, and each thrust brought him closer to completeness. He wriggled his hand between their bodies, found the point that made her squirm and groan, and made her spasm around him and shiver and shake, pulling him with her over the edge. And just when he was almost there, the answer slipped away again. He collapsed on top of her, feeling as if he just hit a concrete wall, grinding every fiber of his body to dust with the impact.

It took him a few minutes before he was able to lift his head and look at her, and lift his weight off her, pulling her into his arms as he slid to her side.

“Are you alright, Lily?” he asked, with his voice hoarse and broken, and she drew in a deep and sobbing breath.

“Yes.” But she didn't stop sobbing, and he was too shocked to react with anything else than holding her in a tight embrace.

“Please…” He had no idea what it was he pleaded for, but her tears made him feel like a criminal, as if he truly was the monster she had seen in him when he had forced her to take off her clothes. But she didn’t pull away from him, instead she buried her face on his chest and snuck her arm around him, holding him just as tight as he was holding her.

“I just…I was hoping you would be there with me. I just wanted to feel you.” Her tears soaked through his shirt, and he had no idea what she was talking about. But then again, maybe she felt just as detached as he himself. Maybe she was just as much looking for a way through the fog as he was.

“I hoped that, too”, he whispered into her hair, and for a while, they just held each other.

“Do you still hate me?” she asked, sounding choked, and he tightened his grip around her.

“I don’t hate you, pet. But we both hurt each other, and I don’t know if we can go back from that.”

“Can we just try to be…here, for now?” she asked, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead.

“Yes. Let’s do that.”

He was not entirely sure what she meant, but he felt less empty with her in his arms, and he wanted to hold on to that for just a little longer. Before the monster lurking in the mists reared its head again and broke them once again in tiny pieces.  The bell over the front door rang and announced a customer, and when he heard the Mayor call out for him, he knew that his time with Lily French once again ended too soon.

“Will you still be here when I come back?” he whispered, and clenched his jaw when she cupped his cheek and smiled that sad smile, and shook her head.


End file.
